War Crimes Trial Verdicts Put Bangladesh On Edge

Supporters of the Jamaat-e-Islami party rallied to scrap the ‘International Crimes Tribunal,’ under which eight leaders of the party are being tried for alleged war crimes, in Dhaka, Bangladesh, Feb. 4.

Tension is soaring in Bangladesh as a war crimes trial set up to investigate atrocities committed during Bangladesh’s 1971 war of independence draws to a close, with the first of the verdicts announced last month and another expected on Tuesday.

Hundreds of thousands of civilians died in the war many of them at the hands of Islamist militia who opposed independence and wanted Bangladesh to remain part of Pakistan. Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s government set up the war crimes tribunal two years ago and pledged it would adhere to standards of international justice.

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But Bangladesh’s opposition parties say the tribunal has been politicized. All of the ten people on trial for war crimes are opposition politicians. Eight are senior leaders of the Jamaat-e-Islami, an Islamist party that is an electoral ally of the main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party.

Protests have built since the tribunal on Jan. 21 sentenced Abul Kalam Azad, a well-known cleric and a former member of Jamaat-e-Islami, to death for crimes including genocide, murder, rape and arson. Mr. Azad was sentenced in absentia and his whereabouts are unknown. Rights groups criticized the failure of Mr. Azad’s state-appointed lawyer to call any witnesses in his defense.

Verdicts are imminent in separate cases against two other Jamaat-e-Islami leaders, Delwar Hossain Sayeedi and Abdul Quader Molla, who face charges including murder, rape and arson. The court is likely to hand down Mr. Molla’s verdict on Tuesday, according to lawyers working at the tribunal.

Both men, who are in custody in Bangladesh, deny wrongdoing. Their sentencing is likely to be met by protests from party workers.

The Jamaat-e-Islami called for a nationwide strike on Tuesday ahead of the verdict against Mr. Molla, who holds the post of assistant secretary general in the party.

In the past two weeks, Jamaat-e-Islami and BNP supporters have attempted to enforce strikes and shop closures, leading to clashes with police.

Police said they shot and killed two Jamaat-e-Islami activists last week in fighting across the country. The party said four of its members were shot dead by police.

Over the weekend, 12 people, including five policemen, were injured after supporters of Jamaat-e-Islami, clashed with police in a suburb of Dhaka.

Shafiqul Islam Masud, a member of the Majlish-e-Shura, or central council that runs the Jamaat-e-Islami, claimed the government was unfairly targeting his organization.

“We do not accept this trial, which we’re afraid is nothing but judicial killing with a political motive,” he said. “The Jamaat-e-Islami has 10 million members and we will exercise our right to protest. We will lay down our lives on the street before we let this government punish our leaders for crimes they did not commit.”

He claimed the police had used undue force against protesters.

Monirul Islam, a police spokesman, denied opposition activists were being unfairly targeted. “When someone is out to create anarchy, the security forces have a duty to act,” he said.

The BNP, led by Khaleda Zia, a former prime minister, has stopped short of calling for the trials to be stopped, but has accused Ms. Hasina of using war crimes as a pretext for targeting the opposition.

“The Awami League forged an electoral understanding with the Jamaat-e-Islami in 1996 to win the election,” said Rizvi Ahmed, a senior BNP leader. “They did not talk about war crimes then. This time they’re targeting Jamaat because it is allied with us.”

Ms. Hasina, the prime minister, has denied politicizing the war crimes tribunal. On Saturday, she said street agitation would not stop the trials, a process she said was “necessary to rid the nation of stigma,” according to Bangladesh Sangbad Sangstha, the state-owned news agency.

Muhammad Musa, a political analyst and former newspaper editor, said there was a risk that street violence might spiral out of control and threaten Bangladesh’s fledgling democracy. “Unless good sense prevails and the Jamaat-e-Islami restrains its rank and file, violence might destabilize the state,” he said.

Instability in Bangladesh also is being fanned by a number of other factors. The opposition BNP wants the government to reinstate a system which allows a non-partisan caretaker government to oversee elections. Ms. Hasina’s government scrapped this system two years ago and opposition politicians have taken to the streets to demand a reversal before national elections scheduled for early 2014. Protests over the issue have regularly turned violent, with clashes between police and demonstrators.

Workers’ protests over safety issues at Bangladeshi factories that churn out clothes for Western brands also have added to the sense of chaos. In November, a fire at a factory outside Dhaka killed 112 people, the country’s worst garment-industry accident.

Sam Zarifi, Asia director for the International Commission of Jurists, a Geneva-based legal advocacy, said the current criticism of the war crimes process could harm the goal of national reconciliation.

The government’s opponents have based their claims that the trials are biased on a series of conversations that appear to be between the former chairman of the original tribunal, Mohammed Nizamul Huq, and a Bangladeshi human-rights lawyer based in Brussels, Ahmed Ziauddin.

December, The Wall Street Journal reviewed copies of transcripts of six conversations purported to be between Mr. Huq and Mr. Ziauddin carried out over Skype between August and October. Neither man has publicly commented on the authenticity of the conversation transcripts. Neither could be reached for comment.

Mr. Huq resigned last month from the tribunal but remains a Supreme Court judge. He previously has denied wrongdoing.

The transcripts suggest that Mr. Ziauddin, despite having no formal position in the war-crimes tribunal, plays a key role in the process, including helping to structure judgments and coordinating with the prosecution. The transcripts show the two men commenting about pressure from the government for a quick judgment.

In one conversation, in a recorded file labeled Sept. 10, the person identified as Mr. Ziauddin tells the person thought to be Mr. Huq that he is working on the “sketch” of how a judgment in the case of Mr. Sayeedi might look.

Lawyers for four of the accused, including Mr. Sayeedi, filed for retrials after the tapes came to light but the tribunal rejected the petitions.

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